Qualcomm switches loyalty – big contract goes to Samsung

Samsung will be the sole manufacturer of Qualcomm's new flagship mobile chip – which means that the company is stepping away from chip foundery TSMC.

The deal is estimated to be worth more than USD 1 billion, which comes rather nicely as Samsung is heading into another earnings drop due to the slowing demand for consumer electronics and components, according to a Reuters' report.

Besides the value of the deal, this is a very big thing since Qualcomm has never before used foundries other than TSMC to make its high-end chipsets, Maybank Kim Eng analyst Warren Lau told Reuters.

And with the contract going to Samsung, TSMC just lost one of its top customers.

And Samsung said in a press release that it has begun mass production of advanced logic chips utilising its 14nm LPP(Low-Power Plus) process. And that Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor uses Samsung’s new 14nm LPP process and is expected to be in devices in the first half of this year.

In a statement to Reuters, Qualcomm said that Samsung is the sole manufacturer for the new Snapdragon 820 mobile processors.